If you have a job in which you never have cause to attend a conference, consider yourself lucky. Conferences and trade shows are among the most idiotic constructs of corporate America, a rancid bouillabaisse of sales call, vacation, shopping, forced death march, and marital infidelity. And then when you get back to the cube, you still have to make up all the work you didn’t do while you were running up your expense account in some other city.
So why, I ask, are creative types like musicians and filmmakers — people who ostensibly chose their lot in life largely as a way to avoid shit like conferences — eager to have their own?
You’ve all no doubt heard about South By Southwest, Austin’s mega-music conference. So have I. But Austin is not within driving distance of Ann Arbor, and Toronto is. So I’m here at North By Northeast to try and figure out what exactly a music and film conference is and why anyone would want to travel halfway across the continent to hang out in a Holiday Inn.
Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2007 15:16:07 -0700 (PDT)
From: “Jeff Sabatini”
To: “Jake Brown”
Subject: Re: NXNE post 1
I have no idea what to do with these e-mails. Pat will be sending some too. Your decision about how to deal with it. We’re drunk now, so things are going well. And we’ve already hung out with a celebrity. Tomorrow is Rob Halford.
XOXO, Jeff
Heading to Canadia over the Ambassador Bridge
Sab
We missed the lezbian show
Breakfast
Sunburned Pat with Ilko Davidov, director of Unauthorized
Our shitty swag bag
Room with a view
Yes, that’s the Jager logo
These dorks are Said The Whale
The Leatherettes, third-rate Demolition Doll Rods impersonators
Action Makes opening for Soundtrack of Our Lives
Soundtrack of Our Lives at The Silver Dollar
Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 06:22:22 -0700 (PDT)
From: “Jeff Sabatini”
To: “Jake Brown”
Subject: More pics coming
Pat and I have both started writing, and I think we’re going to coordinate so that we’re not writing two separate and overlapping accounts. The first batch of pics I sent were all from Friday. I will send more pics from Saturday today. Perhaps you can post all the pics in advance of the stories?
Anyway, the event was fucking awesome. We’re both very glad we went, despite having blown close to a grand between the two of us. (Our bar tabs accounting for roughly half of that.) Canada is fucking expensive right now, as the exchange rate is freaking even.
–Jeff
Coming soon: Photos from Saturday, and the full GLONO write-up… Stay tuned!
“These dorks are Said The Whale”
Oh man. I feel a MC2-styled smash up coming on.